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Barrows - Rise of the Six


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The drops have mostly tanked, though the kills are very easy at this point -- not much else to say. The update was basically designed so that the super wealthy people with lots of money could walk in with their seismics, make lots of money (billions), after which everything else crashed as everyone else learned, and then it became a normal boss hunting activity with profits in line with the other things (KK/Nex, etc.). 

 

 

Mind you, once you get the hang of it, this is a very, very, very  fun activity. The learning curve is very steep though, and it does require TS/Skype at a level previously unheard of RS (though after a while you might be able to get away with not having them)...

 

This is different from Nex and KK in this respect. When Nex was released, the best weapons and armours to kill her with, chaotics, Armadyl, Bandos, Dragon Claws, DFS, etc. were widely available so just about any average high level could go there and make lots of money. Similarly, when KK was released, you could still kill very efficiently with Chaotic Maul + Void -- the bosses were very egalitarian. Any high level could walk in and have a very good shot at it. This boss however, was different, early on, it was all about the Seismics/Ascensions/Tectonic (as the extra DPS really helped with smoother kills early on the learning curve) -- it was different in that regard. I expect this trend will continue with future bosses -- where highly wealthy players will have a very significant advantage.

 

On an unrelated note, I did go with a non-elite team just for the hell of it (all my teams up till this point had been elite), where my partner had full virtus and dual Ahrm's (wand + book), and he was doing surprisingly decently on the kills. 

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The experienced teams have done kills in full t70 gear for the hell of it, so it's certainly possible, only issue is how people with t70 gear only would get the experience required in the first place.

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This is different from Nex and KK in this respect. When Nex was released, the best weapons and armours to kill her with, chaotics, Armadyl, Bandos, Dragon Claws, DFS, etc. were widely available so just about any average high level could go there and make lots of money. Similarly, when KK was released, you could still kill very efficiently with Chaotic Maul + Void -- the bosses were very egalitarian. Any high level could walk in and have a very good shot at it. This boss however, was different, early on, it was all about the Seismics/Ascensions/Tectonic (as the extra DPS really helped with smoother kills early on the learning curve) -- it was different in that regard. I expect this trend will continue with future bosses -- where highly wealthy players will have a very significant advantage.

Beg to differ. Nex really needed Overloads (smoke phase) and Yaks, which were not something you'd find on average high levels at the time. Of course you could mass it, but it'd be extremely inefficient if you were an average high level then, just as Super Barrows is inefficient for average high levels now.

 

I guess the main difference is that Super Barrows comes with hard restrictions so that you can't mass it; you could get away with massing Nex and KK, so average high levels would still be able to get kills (not so much for Vorago which had anti-massing mechanics).

 

Of course, bossing has always been about highly wealthy players having significant advantages, such as the rich being able to afford Pernix for early Nex, as well as Drygore for the Kalphite King (back when the accuracy difference completely decimated all its forms).

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The experienced teams have done kills in full t70 gear for the hell of it, so it's certainly possible, only issue is how people with t70 gear only would get the experience required in the first place.

Would I be wrong in saying that gear makes the biggest difference in the beginning, when you need the extra stats to give you some room for error? It's always been possible to do a lot of these elite bosses in subpar gear (Except weapons now?), it's just never been efficient.

 

Re: Yoko: Pre-EoC there were other high-level perks that you really couldn't substitute, though: things like the yak's second inventory worth of sources, OVL's boost+stat restore and spirit shield damage reduction kept the non-elite out of Nex in the beginning, just as T90 does here.

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Fallstar, on 21 Nov 2013 - 08:36 AM, said:

The experienced teams have done kills in full t70 gear for the hell of it, so it's certainly possible, only issue is how people with t70 gear only would get the experience required in the first place.

 

 

Yes, and as I mentioned, someone I did this with today did it with dual Ahrims. But this is several days after many have gone through the learning curve, and the crashes in the price have already occurred. I don't doubt that once you have gone through the experience curve you can do this easily. My point was that in the beginning it was about the Seismics and Tectonics and what not...

 

 

 

Saradomin_Mage, on 21 Nov 2013 - 08:43 AM, said:

 

Yoko Kurama, on 21 Nov 2013 - 08:15 AM, said:

This is different from Nex and KK in this respect. When Nex was released, the best weapons and armours to kill her with, chaotics, Armadyl, Bandos, Dragon Claws, DFS, etc. were widely available so just about any average high level could go there and make lots of money. Similarly, when KK was released, you could still kill very efficiently with Chaotic Maul + Void -- the bosses were very egalitarian. Any high level could walk in and have a very good shot at it. This boss however, was different, early on, it was all about the Seismics/Ascensions/Tectonic (as the extra DPS really helped with smoother kills early on the learning curve) -- it was different in that regard. I expect this trend will continue with future bosses -- where highly wealthy players will have a very significant advantage.

Beg to differ. Nex really needed Overloads (smoke phase) and Yaks, which were not something you'd find on average high levels at the time. Of course you could mass it, but it'd be extremely inefficient if you were an average high level then, just as Super Barrows is inefficient for average high levels now.

 

I guess the main difference is that Super Barrows comes with hard restrictions so that you can't mass it; you could get away with massing Nex and KK, so average high levels would still be able to get kills (not so much for Vorago which had anti-massing mechanics).

 

Of course, bossing has always been about highly wealthy players having significant advantages, such as the rich being able to afford Pernix for early Nex, as well as Drygore for the Kalphite King (back when the accuracy difference completely decimated all its forms).

 

 

 

Summoning was very easy to train actually. I got 99 summoning alongside 99 slayer, over the course of a 7-9 months, with moderate gameplay, and I would often use the Slayer points to buy the runes reward so I could Ice burst rock lobsters with Ahrims/Veracs + Staff of Light. Not unreasonable by any means. I did some Waterfiends as well. The slayer drops were more than enough to pay for the secondaries. It wasn't an overnight thing, but it wasn't terribly difficult either. 

 

As for 96 herblore (which I got immediately after the overload update, from about 77-99) Not really comparable to today. If you wanted to do it the purely expensive way it was about 100-200M -- there were cheaper but slower ways to get it for much less. It wasn't ridiculously hard by any means -- though against it wasn't a cakewalk either.

 

It's true that rich people have had advantages, but usually after the boss hunt gets going -- so once the loot starts coming into the game, the rich are the first to be able to buy them, but still, early on, there is a parity, everyone starts with the same Chaotic Maul + Void regardless of how much money they have. It's different now that they already have all the T90 gear in the world, so they can just walk in at any boss on day one and dominate.

 

If we want to go back even further, when God Wars came out, I and several of my friends were able to do with complete welfare gear (black dragonhide and rune crossbows for Armadyl, full Verac's for Sara -- and Saradomin and Armadyl were the most expensive of the 4. Just about any gear, such as whip + rune armour for Bandos, and Karil's for Zamorak) and make loads of money. Similarly, if you wanna go back further, the KQ was similarly welfared, easily, with black dragonhide, and/or Veracs, or Mystic armour for the mages. Similarly, barrows could be done with Mystic/Splitbark armour, or Rune armour. The KBD was also very accessible. 

 

The current trend is very different from all that.

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Your reasoning at the end there about old bosses and "wellfare" gear is a little off. All of that gear was close to best in game when those bosses came out, not "wellfare" gear. Bosses have evolved to require harder gear because such gear is available. And there will be bosses which are harder still when we get better gear available to us. It is the nature of the game and endgame content. The best requires the best, at least at first.

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Your reasoning at the end there about old bosses and "wellfare" gear is a little off. All of that gear was close to best in game when those bosses came out, not "wellfare" gear. Bosses have evolved to require harder gear because such gear is available. And there will be bosses which are harder still when we get better gear available to us. It is the nature of the game and endgame content. The best requires the best, at least at first.

The thing is, "best gear" back then was FAR more accessible than the "best gear" now.

 

For rune armor and mystic, they were not very rare drops from very complicated bosses, they were BOUGHT from a store. Sure, rune plate and legs were VERY rare drops from something that was pretty hard to kill, but you would most likely end up mining or wc for the 200k to buy it. Same for mystic. Before slayer, it could only be gotten from the mages guild for 220k or something.

Black dhide was unique in that it also required a high skill to make and couldn't be bought.

 

Next, we got to barrows and whip class weapons. Whips required a high slayer lvl to get, but were fairly easy to farm. They also cost a fair bit of money, but nothing that was impossible to get

Barrows was a tad hard, and could kill you if you were careless. On the other hand, you could do it in rune armor with air bolt if you knew what you were doing. Meaning, it was very accessible content.

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Your reasoning at the end there about old bosses and "wellfare" gear is a little off. All of that gear was close to best in game when those bosses came out, not "wellfare" gear. Bosses have evolved to require harder gear because such gear is available. And there will be bosses which are harder still when we get better gear available to us. It is the nature of the game and endgame content. The best requires the best, at least at first.

 

Except that Vorago flat out REQUIRES you to have t80/t90 gear. Without the majority of your team having t90 weapons, you will fail in part 5. Without t80 gear, you will probably be killed by his opening attack unless you go in a large team, which will still cause you to fail because his stats will scale far past your team's capabilities with your sub-par gear.

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Your reasoning at the end there about old bosses and "wellfare" gear is a little off. All of that gear was close to best in game when those bosses came out, not "wellfare" gear. Bosses have evolved to require harder gear because such gear is available. And there will be bosses which are harder still when we get better gear available to us. It is the nature of the game and endgame content. The best requires the best, at least at first.

The thing is, "best gear" back then was FAR more accessible than the "best gear" now.

 

For rune armor and mystic, they were not very rare drops from very complicated bosses, they were BOUGHT from a store. Sure, rune plate and legs were VERY rare drops from something that was pretty hard to kill, but you would most likely end up mining or wc for the 200k to buy it. Same for mystic. Before slayer, it could only be gotten from the mages guild for 220k or something.

Black dhide was unique in that it also required a high skill to make and couldn't be bought.

 

Next, we got to barrows and whip class weapons. Whips required a high slayer lvl to get, but were fairly easy to farm. They also cost a fair bit of money, but nothing that was impossible to get

Barrows was a tad hard, and could kill you if you were careless. On the other hand, you could do it in rune armor with air bolt if you knew what you were doing. Meaning, it was very accessible content.

 

Rune and Mystic were level 40 pieces of gear, Barrows/Whips were (are) level 70 pieces of equipment. Despite each of them being endgame in their own time, they progressively became harder to obtain because they were simply of a higher level. Likewise, chaotics and Nex gear at level 80 were exponentially harder to obtain than level 70 gear. Shouldn't this be an expected trend for high-levelled gear as we eventually approach level 99 equips?

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In real life MMO you don't get 99 smithing by making endless bronze daggers.

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Your reasoning at the end there about old bosses and "wellfare" gear is a little off. All of that gear was close to best in game when those bosses came out, not "wellfare" gear. Bosses have evolved to require harder gear because such gear is available. And there will be bosses which are harder still when we get better gear available to us. It is the nature of the game and endgame content. The best requires the best, at least at first.

The thing is, "best gear" back then was FAR more accessible than the "best gear" now.

 

For rune armor and mystic, they were not very rare drops from very complicated bosses, they were BOUGHT from a store. Sure, rune plate and legs were VERY rare drops from something that was pretty hard to kill, but you would most likely end up mining or wc for the 200k to buy it. Same for mystic. Before slayer, it could only be gotten from the mages guild for 220k or something.

Black dhide was unique in that it also required a high skill to make and couldn't be bought.

 

Next, we got to barrows and whip class weapons. Whips required a high slayer lvl to get, but were fairly easy to farm. They also cost a fair bit of money, but nothing that was impossible to get

Barrows was a tad hard, and could kill you if you were careless. On the other hand, you could do it in rune armor with air bolt if you knew what you were doing. Meaning, it was very accessible content.

 

Rune and Mystic were level 40 pieces of gear, Barrows/Whips were (are) level 70 pieces of equipment. Despite each of them being endgame in their own time, they progressively became harder to obtain because they were simply of a higher level. Likewise, chaotics and Nex gear at level 80 were exponentially harder to obtain than level 70 gear. Shouldn't this be an expected trend for high-levelled gear as we eventually approach level 99 equips?

 

But why does it need to be like that? Eventually you have to draw a line. What, are the t95 weapons going to cost 4b? When is enough enough?

 

I have no problem with it being difficult to obtain the best stuff, as long as it is realistic. Max Cash+ in liquid assets (i.e., not counting net worth that could be liquified resulting in your entire bank consisting of one item) is not realistic. This is a game, not a factory job. No item in any game should ever require 400 hours to obtain. And that's about it would take to get 2.4B assuming you can earn 6m an hour, which is generally considered fairly respectable.

 

Even if something required multiple 99s in noncombats to obtain, I'd be fine with that. Someone can obtain 99 crafting, mining, and smithing all long before the amount of time it would require to obtain 2.4b GP. That is what I am getting at.

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Yeah, of course Vorago is over-the-top unreasonable the way it is at the moment. The mechanic is fine, in a sense that the boss is lengthy and hard compared to previous lower-levelled bosses, but the part that makes it an unbearable slog and unreasonably expensive is the drop rate as it is. Ideally seismics and other level 90 shouldn't cost over max cash; in fact, neither should level 99 gear when we get there.

 

The mechanisms and barriers to obtaining higher-tiered gear should scale and get more difficult to reward those more competent and those who put more effort/time/skill into the game; however, they should do so at a reasonable pace. Vorago's seismic drops currently don't.

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In real life MMO you don't get 99 smithing by making endless bronze daggers.

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?

 

Who said it couldn't be fun to do whatever you have to do for t99 gear.

Don't even bother reasoning with them.  This is just another argument about time/effort.  Funny how its the same people in every topic now still complaining about the same things.

 

Face it, Jagex has a business model, one that is shared with nearly every other MMO. Giving people max equipment quickly has been shown to hurt more than help people to keep playing the game over an extended period, as if you have max equipment what do you have to strive for?  An example of a game I played that is like this is Terraria.  Although it is not an MMO, you could play online with people and host servers.  And although the creators of the game didn't exactly GIVE people the items (they were items you had to make or find and it took a while), it was easy to hack into the game and spawn the best stuff for yourself. But people said "Half the game is about creating cool stuff so no big deal right? They can now use those items to have more fun right?" They were so wrong.  So what happened? People got all the best stuff, got bored, and stopped playing even though there was the creation aspect of the game. No one explored generated worlds anymore because there was no point to doing it. For over a year, playership dropped dramatically.  Recently, an update spiked playership because it added about 100 new items, but then it dropped again for the same reason.

 

Jagex can make things less rare, sure, but then you will be statistically less likely to play their game.  And because you are still playing their game right now even though you are complaining, they don't see a reason to change it.  People haven't quit because seismics are too expensive, they quit for other reasons.

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I don't think that releasing t99 equipment that can be obtained in, say, 50 hours, for a full armour set of a single style, would damage Jagex' business. Exactly because of the thing you mentioned: "Half the game is about creating cool stuff so no big deal right". In Runescape, only a tiny portion of the game is actually obtaining equipment, and a large portion of the game is using the equipment to get better stats/get completionist reqs/kill bosses faster/get rares/kill players faster. I think that only a small minority of the people would want to spend 400+ hours to obtain a set of t99 equipment, given that 99s are in the range of 100-200 hours.

 

Look at the balance:

50-60 hours to get 1-90 attack.

100 hours to get level 90 equipment (currently there's no t90 armour that's worth using for slayer/combat training, but let's say drygores + torva/steads or whatever).

40-50 hours to get 90-99 attack.

400+ hours to get a max cash stack to get level 99 equipment.

 

Very simple: it's not worth getting 2.5b gp worth of equipment if it doesn't speed up your boss kills by at least [lots]%. Equipment is a means to an end, not a goal in itself. If you want to spend 400+ hours to get a party hat, go for it. I'm getting my 99 mining and my 99 smithing and my 99 attack and I'm smithing myself a t99 weapon, and it won't take a minute. And then I'll go boss hunting for my max cash, to buy all the silly cosmetics I need.

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I have to disagree with you that you think t99 equipment should be obtainable via skills in ~50 hours & I do think it would damage the game - unless it degraded at a ridiculously fast rate or had a specific purpose.

Right now there is nothing in the game that can't be put down with relative ease when using seismics, the games barely ready for such a weapon IMO so rightly so it should stay a highly priced item.

Until there are multiple bosses like Vorago which require a high amount of dps then there's no need for such equipment. 

The money spent on Siesmics is worth it simply because it out classes everything else pvm related in this game, its kinda like the Staff of Armadyl.. I bet all the rs gods would would pay bils to get that back from Sliske. :PP 

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?

 

Who said it couldn't be fun to do whatever you have to do for t99 gear.

Don't even bother reasoning with them.  This is just another argument about time/effort.  Funny how its the same people in every topic now still complaining about the same things.

 

Face it, Jagex has a business model, one that is shared with nearly every other MMO. Giving people max equipment quickly has been shown to hurt more than help people to keep playing the game over an extended period, as if you have max equipment what do you have to strive for?  An example of a game I played that is like this is Terraria.  Although it is not an MMO, you could play online with people and host servers.  And although the creators of the game didn't exactly GIVE people the items (they were items you had to make or find and it took a while), it was easy to hack into the game and spawn the best stuff for yourself. But people said "Half the game is about creating cool stuff so no big deal right? They can now use those items to have more fun right?" They were so wrong.  So what happened? People got all the best stuff, got bored, and stopped playing even though there was the creation aspect of the game. No one explored generated worlds anymore because there was no point to doing it. For over a year, playership dropped dramatically.  Recently, an update spiked playership because it added about 100 new items, but then it dropped again for the same reason.

 

Jagex can make things less rare, sure, but then you will be statistically less likely to play their game.  And because you are still playing their game right now even though you are complaining, they don't see a reason to change it.  People haven't quit because seismics are too expensive, they quit for other reasons.

 

Also funny it's always the same conceited wagons who argue "U just 2 lazy L, grind frost dragons 4 400 hrs or gtfo plocks"

 

What you fail to grasp is that "we" are not advocating an easy button. Grind is necessary for the survival of an MMO, indeed. But there needs to be BALANCE. If items are too easy to get, people don't have any goals and quickly become bored. However, if items are too far out of reach, the same result occurs. Goals have to be realistic or else people simply become discouraged and give up.

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I have to disagree with you that you think t99 equipment should be obtainable via skills in ~50 hours & I do think it would damage the game - unless it degraded at a ridiculously fast rate or had a specific purpose.

Right now there is nothing in the game that can't be put down with relative ease when using seismics, the games barely ready for such a weapon IMO so rightly so it should stay a highly priced item.

Until there are multiple bosses like Vorago which require a high amount of dps then there's no need for such equipment. 

The money spent on Siesmics is worth it simply because it out classes everything else pvm related in this game, its kinda like the Staff of Armadyl.. I bet all the rs gods would would pay bils to get that back from Sliske. :PP 

 

I think that a pretty fair balance would be an item that required multiple 99s (e.g. mining + smithing + crafting) in addition to 50 hours of some POP-like minigame and lasted 30K hits before degrading to dust. And just for grins and giggles, Jagex could add in an item as a rare drop from various future high-level bosses that could be used with say, 99 divination, to repair a piece of the armor to full durability. It wouldn't be able to make the armor itself, but just repair it.

 

The problem with having items that are worth billions is that it further invalidates Skilling-- you know, actually playing the majority of the game? Killing bosses and flipping items are the only ways to earn that kind of money. I don't have anywhere CLOSE to those skills, but I would still be happy to know that people who played the game would be rewarded for a change, instead of just people who are lucky or just stand at the GE all day manipulating the market.

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